009 || Build Your Own Homeschool: My Entire Curriculum Planning Process

It’s curriculum planning season, and if you’re deep in research, deep in comparison, and slowly losing your mind trying to figure out what to use next year, this episode is for you.

Sarah shares her entire curriculum planning process: why knowing your educational philosophy is the only filter you actually need, how she plans family-style to save time, money, and sanity with multiple kids, the feast framework for deciding how much is too much, and the Google spreadsheet she uses to map everything out before spending a dollar. Plus the mistakes she sees most often — including the one that quietly burns more homeschools than any bad curriculum ever could.

The full 2026–2027 curriculum picks for kindergarten, third grade, sixth grade, and toddler are linked in the show notes.

Links:

•       Starter Glue-Print

•       2026-2027 Curriculum Choices Blog Post

•       Episode 004 — Stop Rebuilding Your Homeschool Every Sunday (weekly rhythm deep dive)

•        Simply Charlotte Mason

•        Ambleside Online

•        Math-U-See

•        TypingClub

•        Daily Riches curriculum

•        Buds, Blooms + Bees science curriculum

•        Shop all Homeschool Glue resources

•        Follow on Instagram

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We are all in the throes of planning for next year. Whether you're starting planning and you're just getting the ball rolling, or you're buying everything, or you're making some final purchases or plans, or you have just decided to start homeschooling for the first time and you're researching, or you're coming up with a plan for how you're actually going to implement all the stuff you have to do for next year. So we are deep in research, deep into Facebook groups, YouTube videos, conversations with friends, and we're slowly losing our minds trying to figure out what to use next year or how to implement it. And I have been there, I am still kind of there, even though I have a plan. And I have spent hours in the past going down rabbit holes only to end up more confused than when I started. So I thought it would be helpful to create a podcast episode where I'm gonna share practical tips for how I actually plan our curriculum, the whole process, and the things I've learned after many years now of homeschooling now, four kids if you count my toddler, or homeschooling three kids with a toddler. Um, that I wish someone had told me at the beginning. I just think it's helpful to actually hear how somebody else does it. Now, this may not be exactly how you're going to do it, but hopefully you can get some little nuggets that you can apply to your own planning process. Glue. It's messy, it's sticky, it gets everywhere. But without it, nothing holds. Homeschool life can feel messy too. We have the loud days, the mental overload, so many moving parts. But we don't need is more curriculum or more pressure to do it all. We need something that holds. Simple systems, steady rhythms, the kind of structure that makes homeschooling easier instead of heavier. Hi, I'm Sarah, a homeschool mom of four, and this is the Homeschool Glue Podcast. Each week we have an honest conversation about real homeschool life and the simple systems that help overwhelmed homeschool moms clear the mental clutter, build rhythms that actually stick, and create the peaceful lives we are all craving. If you're tired of carrying everything and getting nowhere, you are in the right place. Grab that load of laundry and let's get started. Welcome back to the Homeschool Glue podcast. Like I said, it is curriculum planning season, and I know a lot of you are in the thick of it right now. I actually just published a very detailed blog post about every single thing that I'm planning to use for our 2026 to 2027 school year for kindergarten, third grade, sixth grade, and our toddler. I will link that in the show notes so you can go read all the specifics there. There's links, there's discount codes, there's my thoughts about it, why we chose everything, what we're using from last year, and so on and so forth. But today, because that would be kind of boring to just read through um a curriculum post when you can't see any of the things I'm talking about, you can just go ahead and read that. But I thought I would take from that and really expand on it of how I plan what makes me make the decisions I do, what are some of the steps I take to make it easier, and that kind of thing. Because this has been the process I've used the last few years now, and it's just really streamlined and it's worked really well for me. So I have three kids, like I said, that will actually be homeschooling next year for kindergarten, third grade, and sixth grade, and then I've got my toddler as well. And so I'm thinking about all of those things. I'm thinking about the different ages, I'm thinking about the fact that I have a toddler, I'm thinking about our philosophy, I'm thinking about what we used last year, what worked well this past year, what didn't, and that kind of thing. And so instead of just borrowing what everybody else is doing online, because chances are that's not going to work, and what works for me may not work perfectly for you. What works for me this year probably wouldn't have worked for me in the past years and may not work in the future years because we all have different kids, different situations, different ages, different learning styles, different philosophies of education, and that kind of thing. And so I just thought we'd talk more practically. So I'm gonna give you some tips and just kind of expand upon them as we go. So my first tip is to really know your why before you look at anything. Now, if you're newer to homeschooling, this may take you a while. You may end up having to jump right in before you really know your why, and that's okay. And there is beauty to trying out some different things. My first year we knew I knew I was really gravitating towards Charlotte Mason, so I did a more open and go curriculum that went along with that. But then we tried classical conversations to get more uh of a community around us, and I had a feeling that probably wouldn't be what worked for us, and sure enough, I was right, but I knew I really loved having that community, and I really enjoyed going to the community day every week, but the philosophy behind that didn't work for me, so it's okay to try different things. But if you know what your philosophy of education is, really stick to that when you go to choose things. You may see people on Instagram or on YouTube or in your real life who are doing things differently, and that may seem appealing, but chances are if that doesn't really align with your why or your philosophy of education, if you implemented that, it's probably gonna be a waste of money or a waste of your time. So just really keep that in mind and know that it's okay to choose things with confidence. Um, I've gotten a lot more confident over the years. I have a lot of friends who use Ambleside Online personally in my, you know, our Charlotte Mason Homeschool Book Club and Homeschool Co-op. And I felt a little like less than, like nobody's actually said anything that made me feel that way or anything like that. But just being around so many people using the exact same curriculum, I kind of felt like, oh, well, I do things a little bit differently, but I've had a lot more confidence over the years, and I do use the Amble Side Online to some degree, but it's not the only thing I use. And so it is okay and good to have confidence in the things that you pick. There should be no judgment if somebody is judging you. Maybe they're not somebody that you want to spend a lot of time with because the whole point of homeschooling is that you get to choose. You get to choose what's best for you, you get to choose what's best for your kids, you get to choose what's best in the season, and nobody else knows exactly what your home is like, what you're dealing with, the stresses, the beauty, any of it. And so they can't give you quality advice, they can give you some advice, of course, but nobody can choose the curriculum you want to use as well as you because you actually know what's happening in your house, and you're the one who's gonna be implementing it, and it needs to work for you first and foremost, and then your kids as well. And so just keep that in mind. It is okay and good to have confidence in what you choose, even if it ends up being the wrong thing, and that's okay because you're learning. So for my family, that is sticking with Charlotte Mason. Um, from the beginning, we've been Charlotte Mason homeschoolers, but it's just gotten even our why has gotten even stronger as I've read more, discussed more, and actually seen her methodology carried out with my kids and how well it works, even when I fought against it and then returned to it or started implementing it, like for example, spelling. Um, I kind of went as a former English teacher, I went the more traditional route with memory lists and workbooks and things, and it just wasn't clicking for my oldest. And then this past year, we switched to using language well from Simply Charlotte Mason, which is a lot of just studying the words, picturing the words, rewriting the words, but they're into the context of good quality writing, um, and then dictation, and her spelling has taken off, and it's so much simpler and so much easier, and she likes it better, I like it better, and it's working. So, that is to say, um, it is okay to try different things and see if it works for you. But once you, even if you don't know, have confidence going in, saying, I I may, it may not work for me, and that's okay, but we're trying. So try to find things that align with your principles and not somebody else's principles, not what you think everybody else wants you to do, not what everybody around you is doing, your own philosophy, your own why for your homeschool and your kids' education. If you don't have a clear educational philosophy yet, that is okay. That is the first thing I would recommend you figure out is read books, uh, look up YouTube videos, just really spend some time talking with other people about education and it will get refined over the years. But to have some kind of starting place, because there is so many different types of curricula out there, you don't want to choose something completely out of left field if it doesn't align at all with you know your beliefs on education. Um, but trying over the years to get as close to that as possible. So, my main tip for this is to stop borrowing other people's homeschools, build your own, and it starts with knowing your why. Okay, my tip number two, and this may not be for everybody, but I just want to give you permission to do this because I know a lot of people, especially well, a lot of people feel the need to follow certain paths that other people follow, and you don't have to do that. So for us, my tip is if you're able to do it family style, go for it. Uh, we really love to fit in as much family style learning as possible. When I started homeschooling, that is what I imagine is us learning from the same books a lot of the time and learning about the same time period, learning about the same science if we're able to, learning about the same history and geography, and having these meaningful conversations and going on vacations and making connections with one another because we're learning a lot of the same things. Now, that may not be what you want, that's okay. Um, but I just wanted to give you permission that you can do this. I know there are beliefs out there that every child should have completely different uh subjects and things to fit their level, but there are so many ways to work around this. And so this is something, like I said, a lot of people in my homeschool community, my homeschool tribe, if you will, use Ambleside Online. And I have loved every book I've read from the Ambleside Online curriculum list, book list. However, it's just never felt like the one curriculum for my family because of this whole family style pull that I feel. And there are so many reasons why I want to homeschool, not just or homeschool family style, not just because obviously we can make more connections, but also it saves so much time when you're learning a lot of the same things. It helps so much when you have littles underfoot because you're knocking out history faster than if each kid has a different book. Um, you can come together more. Uh, it's just, it's truly something I just absolutely love. You save money because there's fewer things you're buying. So for us, the ones we do together are Bible, history, geography, science to some degree. Um, I have some books that I've pulled that we read separately, but like our main science for next year is anatomy, and it's on the AO sixth grade list, but I'm using it for all of my kids, and I'll adapt as needed. But I think my kindergartner will still get a lot out of it. A lot will be over her head, but I can also get books, picture books that can fit with what we're learning. Like if we're learning about the circulatory system, I can find some books that will fit more of her age range, and but we're then we're still all learning at the same time and the same science. Nature study, the riches. I use my daily riches, which uh I created because I wanted something family style that does it all for you to learn poetry, Bible, picture study, composer study, poetry, hymns, folk songs, um, copy work, all of that is in there, handicraft. Um, and so we do that together. And then it's just really helpful to do it this way because you're all together. You can knock that out. I don't like using that phrase because we're supposed to be trying to enjoy homeschooling, but some days you just gotta knock it out. And so we can knock out those subjects and then move into the individual subjects. Um, and all those subjects are done then. We don't have to like separate for all these different subjects. So the skills-based subjects are the ones that we still do separately. So math, language, arts, uh, reading, handwriting, phonics, and then I do use the AO book list for some things like literature. Sometimes we read them together. Sometimes um, I have my kids like I'll read one-on-one, or I'll have my oldest go read a chapter on her own, that kind of thing. But so many of the subjects we're doing together, and it's really beautiful, absolutely love it, and that saves time, money, and sanity, and is really beautiful to be learning the same thing and have we have amazing conversations. So if you're homeschooling more than one child and you're not doing this, that is okay. This episode is not to shame you in any way or tell you what you have to do. I'm just trying to encourage that sometimes uh if you're hearing advice that every child should learn completely separate. Well, if you think of the one room schoolhouses, they weren't doing everything completely separate. Some of the things they were doing together, and it worked really well. And there's no rule that says you have to do it completely separately. So I would definitely look into it if it's something that you're interested in. If you're interested in more family style with Charlotte Mason, homeschooling, I definitely recommend Simply Charlotte Mason. That's what we used last year and we're going to use next year. They do a beautiful job of getting you all, and now they've changed it a little bit, but you're still doing with their new four-year cycle instead of a six-year cycle for history. Um, they do a great job of you know, having the core books you read as a family, and then your older kids may have some additional books that they read, but it's still rooted in the same spine, which I really, really love. So definitely check them out if you guys are interested. Um, my third tip is to think of your curriculum like a feast. So this is something that especially as I've gotten added more kids on over the years into our homeschool as they've gotten to school age. Uh, this whole idea that Charlotte Mason describes in her volumes as education being a feast and spreading a wide, generous feast before our kids has been so helpful to think about. And I really take this seriously. I've talked about it in um before I relaunched my podcast. I have other episodes where I really get into this. But when you think of a feast, if you think of like the Thanksgiving feast, and you have let's say you're having a bunch of people over and everybody's bringing something. Well, not every single dish is the main dish. Not every single dish is the turkey. Or maybe you don't love the turkey. So in your mind, stuffing is the main dish, whatever. Doesn't really matter. Um, but not every single dish is the main dish. And so there are lots of side dishes that are great, they're beautiful, they taste delicious, but they're not the main dish. And they're not supposed to be. They're supposed to complement the main dish, but they're not supposed to be the main dish. Okay, so when I think of planning my curriculum for a year, I really try to be mindful of the idea that we are fitting in a lot of different subjects, but they're not all the main subject. So for us, history, bible, geography, that is like our main dish. Then we have the riches, which is a pretty big side dish. It does take some time every day. Um, and then we have things, you know, math, literature, I would say are like your main side dishes. But then everything else is like just a little, we're just taking a little scoop of it. And maybe we're only having a scoop on this day, but not on this day. And maybe we're only doing a scoop once a week of that dish or whatever. Um, and so I'm asking myself, you know, I'm not asking how many subjects can we fit in. I'm asking how long will our day take? And then I use that when I'm thinking about all the different subjects that we're doing. So I'm not thinking about how many of the dishes are we having. I'm thinking practically like how much can I fit on our plate, if you will. So I'm really thinking about that. I'm thinking about the fact that our day um has a toddler underfoot. So I'm thinking practically about that kind of thing. I'm really thinking about how sustainable this will look. And so some years that's gonna look different than other years. Some years I'm gonna have older kids who can do more on their own, maybe in the afternoon. Some years, you know, I won't have a toddler underfoot anymore, and it will be different. But some subjects will be the main course, and those are the things that pretty much happen every day. They're non-negotiable, math, literature, um, language arts for us, Bible, history, and geography. Those always are on the table when you think of the feast. But then the other subjects that are the side dishes, they may happen a few times a week. They add richness and depth, but skipping one because the day went sideways is not a catastrophe. And these are more things like picture study, nature journal, um, written narration, which as they get older should be more of a main dish. But um, especially when they're younger, it doesn't have to be and you're starting slowly, and things like handicraft and things like that. And then some things are the desserts. These are wonderful things when they happen, but I don't plan the whole meal around these things. That's like field trips, special projects, things that enrich but aren't like essential to happen. So when you think about your curriculum as a feast with different courses rather than a checklist of equal items, you stop feeling guilty when the dessert doesn't happen every day and you start protecting the main course more intentionally. My fourth tip is to make your curriculum do the teaching. So this is not for everything, but this is one thing that really helped me and not feel like I am responsible for every part of their education because that's a lot of responsibility, and I'm frankly not great at everything and don't really want to be the teacher because I don't do a really great job of all of the things. I can do a lot, especially with books, but there are some things that are more practical or hands-on that I am not great at. And so I like to outsource those when I can. So there are lots of different ways you can make your curriculum carry more of the teaching load so that you don't have to. And so here are a few of the ways I do that practically in my house. So, for example, um, a couple years ago, I was getting a little burnt out by math. Uh, my oldest and I were really butting heads about it. Times tables came into play, and like some a subject that was pretty easy became a little bit harder. And now um we've kind of gotten past that. But this really helped to kind of outsource it a little bit. That was right at the time we were using the good and the beautiful for math up until um going into next year. We will be switching, but up until this point, we've been using the good and the beautiful, and right when I was like, Oh, I need help with math, like trying to explain it to her has become harder. Like, I know these things in my head, but I'm not great at explaining them. Well, that's the same year, I think it was year three or year four, I can't remember. My uh the good and the beautiful then added for that year, they added video lessons, and I was like, thank you, God, I need those video lessons. And so for that year, we use the video lessons and they helped so much. Now she doesn't really like them, and so she reads the mini lesson, um, or I read it to her and kind of explain it because she's gotten the grasp of a lot of things with the video lessons, but that really, really helped to have math with a video, and so this year, this upcoming year, we're switching to math you see, and they have video lessons, um, which I really appreciate and will be very helpful for teaching the core like lesson and then and the concepts, and then I can take from there and help if they need help, but the main lesson is being taught by a video, and I really appreciate that. Another subject that I don't teach at all is typing. So there are some typing curricula out there where like you buy a book and it walks them through. I don't really get how that works. I just know when I was in school, we went to the computer lab and we played Mavis Beacon, and I learned typing that way, and it was really fun and easy, and the teacher didn't really have to do anything except stand there. And so I found typingclub.com. I just get the free version, and so my old Oldest is the only one doing typing at this time, and she'll just go on the computer, do a couple typing lessons every day, and that's it. And I don't have to do anything at all except make sure she does it. Um, love that. Another way that I kind of outsource the teaching is with audiobooks. So when I'm looking at our curriculum, if it feels like, okay, this may be a lot with a toddler to try to read all these because he's now in the phase of like today when I was doing homeschool, we were reading the flower book for our by Buds Blooms, but Buds, Blooms, and Bees science curriculum that we're finishing up for the year. And he was sitting on the floor right behind me, pretending to read his own book, which was very loud and very cute. He's just babbling away, pretending to read a book because that's what he hears us do all the time. But it gets to be a lot with multiple kids reading different books, and I'm reading a lot of them to them still. So having audiobooks helps so much. And so having a plan in your curriculum when you're planning of which books you can get the audio version of, either for free or really cheap, can help so much. So that on days when you just really need somebody, like you need a clone of yourself to help out, you can just use the audiobook as your clone, or you can just completely schedule that book as an audiobook. Right now we're listening to Understood Betsy. The chapters are kind of long, and um, my oldest also wanted to read the book with us, and so we play that right at the end of our family uh lessons for the day, and while they're listening and I'm listening, I'm like holding the toddler because it's usually the point in the day where he's just getting really clingy, and I start to clean up the table, and it's just really great because they're still listening, I'm still listening, but I'm not having to do the reading and battle, you know, a very clingy, fussy toddler at that time. So I love audiobooks. Um, use them as much as you want, they're a great tool. Another way I outsourced some of our learning is through our co-op. We're part of a small Charlotte Mason co-op that I helped create with some friends. And so this past year I didn't have to teach Shakespeare. I my um oldest took a geography class. We are learning about ancient Egypt and geography of Egypt and Africa in our homeschool at home, but she was learning about Canada and Japan and different places and doing projects that I didn't do at home, and it was just beautiful. Um, we're doing clay handicraft there, so I didn't do a whole lot of handicrafts at home, which really helped with the toddler and having lots of things on my plate. Hymns and folk songs we sing there, which we do at home too. It's just nice to actually sing with others, and we have a you know, a former Charlotte Mason music teacher in our as one of the moms in our co-op. And so she can teach them a lot better about singing than I can, and various other subjects as well, and those really add to our learning, and they're things I don't have to teach at home, and so we haven't planned next year yet, but that's something we think about is okay, what subjects are we including? Are these things now that we can teach at home and we don't need to do a co-op anymore? Or what are some subjects that we would really love to see that we're not getting to at home or we're struggling with at home that we could come together and tackle as a group? So that's a wonderful way to outsource as well. And then I like to tie my hard to remember subjects to specific days, so things like written narration, if your kids are Charlotte Mason homeschoolers and they need to do written narrations and maybe they aren't doing them every single day yet. So my fifth grader is now up to two a week, but she's not quite up to every single day. And so I like to tie her written narrations to certain days and she kick which books on those days she wants to do. And I've you know swapped different days throughout the year, so we're not always doing the same books. But for a term, maybe it's Monday, Wednesday this term, she'll do her her written narrations and tying it to specific days is so much easier than trying to remember every week to fit those more side dish type of subjects in that don't happen every day. Say with like nature adrenaline, having a certain day you do it, or art, um, things like that that aren't everyday subjects, it really helps to tie them to a certain day. So the main goal is to have a homeschool that runs as efficiently as possible, given the actual constraints of your real life, which there are many for most of us. So it's not the ideal version of your life, it's the actual real life day in, day out. Sometimes we're sick, sometimes we're tired, sometimes things go wrong, sometimes we have attitudes, sometimes the kids have attitudes, sometimes the toddler gets in everything, you know, whatever it is. Uh, we want to set up our home school to take all of those things into account. My fifth tip is my favorite tip, and that is to use a spreadsheet before you commit to anything. So I'm just gonna walk you through my actual physical Google Sheet planning process so that you can kind of understand how I do it. And this I've been doing for years, and it just really helps me to visualize everything before I've purchased anything. So when I'm still thinking of what I want to do, I build a Google Sheet. Um, you could do Excel, whatever you want, but it has a section for family subjects at the top, and then I have a section for each child. And the way I have it set up is on the far left, um, in those columns, I leave some space. I leave a couple columns worth of space, and I leave that for later on when I'm trying to figure out what days I'm gonna fit certain subjects in for those more rotating subjects for the AO book list. I want to know we can actually fit it in before I commit to and before I buy it. So I will leave those blank for the beginning when I'm just brain dumping everything that we are thinking about using. And then I have a column for the subject, so literature, math, science, whatever it is, the curriculum source, so Ambleside Online, Simply Charlotte Mason, Homeschool Glue, you know, whatever it is that you use, I put that there. Um, and then I have book titles for any of the books we're using, author, the cost on Amazon, the cost elsewhere, and then if it's and then the link to wherever I can find it. And so, and then I also have a little column of if I've purchased it yet or not. Okay, so I just dump everything into that as I'm thinking. Like, okay, I'm looking at this one, but I'm also looking at this one, especially for science this year. I it took me a little bit to wrap my head around what I wanted to do. And I list all the books. So for Simply Charlotte Mason for their um, you know, history and Bible and geography and all those, they have a lot of books that go along with that. So I list out all the books too, just it helps me to kind of visually see the price and how many books and that kind of thing. So I will list all of that out, and then comes the really important part. I start really mapping out when I think I can fit everything in. So if it's a something like a curriculum, like a spine where you're doing it every day, or if it's math or language arts or something like that, I will mark that in those far left columns. I'll say all year, Monday through Friday or whatever. If it's something like when I'm I'm combining simply Charlotte Mason and AO for a lot of our different books and curriculum. And so I will add a whole bunch from AO and I'll go, okay, when could I actually fit these in? And I'll look at the AO uh schedule and see how often they have scheduled it and for how many terms and how many readings a week, and is it every week and that kind of thing? And I kind of start to take notes of like, okay, I could fit this book in in term one, it's only a one-term book, and then I can fit that in on day one, and then I could fit this book in term one, day two, so on and so forth. And so if I get to the end and I have like three books a day for term one, day one, and all the other days are just like they're all filled with multiple, multiple books for us in the season of life we're in, that's just not possible. And so what we did this past year is I I had one additional book per kid per day on top of everything else, and so that meant for us three to four books a week per kid that we're reading. Some of those are year-long, some are only one term. Um, and so that really guided me. And now for next year, I'm looking at doing the same thing, but now I have three kids homeschooling because I have a kindergartner added in, and so I'll be reading books at her level every day to her. And then, so one book for each of them that I'm reading to them. And then now my oldest is getting to the point where she's going to sixth grade. She can start reading some of her books on her own. So I'm probably gonna add one more additional chapter of a book or reading from a book every day that she's gonna read on her own. So that adds a lot more books throughout the course of a year, and so I really think about that and I think practically of when we're gonna fit these in. And I'm thinking about how long homeschooling takes and what's realistic, and I really try to be practical before I buy anything. Now, when we actually go to read all the books and I purchase them and I see all on the chapters are, that can shift, but it's just really nice to kind of think about that ahead of time, especially if not every single subject that you're doing is open and go. If you're doing kind of a hodgepodge like I do, it's nice to kind of map out when you think you're going to do everything and you can kind of put the puzzle together before you've even purchased anything. So if I can't get it all to fit, I will cut and I'll kind of move some of the extra books to the side, you know, and that I can still reference them later and maybe they'll become free reads, or maybe they'll become read-alouds or something like that, because we do listen to books on audio during lunch every day. So that could be a thing we fit in. Maybe it'll become a summer read, or maybe we just won't get to it, and that's okay. But I try to just put those to the side in case maybe one of the readings is really, really short and we could add an extra one that day. But I don't really know till I buy the books, and so I keep those to the side. But the spreadsheet gives me so much confidence and okay, I feel like we can fit all this in. I know exactly what days I'm thinking of putting it in, and when I actually sit down later on to plan with the books in front of me, it may shift a little bit, but at least on paper it all works versus like just throwing 20 books on there, and I really have no idea if we're gonna be able to get to them, and I've spent the money on them, and now I feel guilty for not fitting them in. And now comes September, I'm gonna try to fit them in, and then I'm gonna feel like a failure because we can't get to all of them, and I have a toddler who's constantly into everything, and it's just too much, my kids are upset. Like it's just very nice to kind of figure it out before you go down that whole domino, you know, effect of what can happen if you just jump and get it all without knowing where it's all gonna fit. Okay, tip number six is your non-negotiabre, your filter. So beyond the big philosophical filter, like I said, of your why and your your educational philosophy, so like Charlotte Mason, classical, or whatever your approach is, I have a few practical non-negotiables that make a curriculum a yes or a no for me very quickly. And it's very helpful to have some of these. So mine may be different than yours, but just even writing these down could be really helpful. So for me, one of my non-negotiables is that it has to be simple to use. If I look at a sample of a curriculum online and I can't quickly figure out how to use it, that's a no. I don't have time to learn a new complicated system. I have, I've said toddler a million times in this episode, but if you've homeschooled with toddlers, you get it. Like I have to be able to think very quickly with lots of interruptions, lots of chaos some days. And if I can't open it and know exactly what to do, then I'm not buying it. That's just one of my personal non-negotiables. I've actually created my own curriculum just so that I could have an open and go resource. So I've done hours and hours of work in my own time so that homeschooling is a lot easier, like my daily riches and my science resources, because I couldn't find anything that fit this non-negotiable. And so I created my own. Um, second, another non-negotiable I have is that has to align with how my kids actually learn. So I really know my kids, I know which ones need more hands-on, I know which ones can do better with reading and what kinds of books and things like that. I know which one needs to move her body more, and I know which one can sit down and focus more. And so if we're getting to a point where there's just too much of one type of learning or too many books or not enough books or whatever it is for each kid, then I'm gonna have to say no to certain things because these are the real children. I'm actually homeschooling, they're not pretend, they're not robots, and so I have to think about that when I'm choosing curriculum. And thirdly, I have to be able to see myself actually doing it. And obviously, the longer you've homeschooled, the more likely you are to uh know this about yourself. But sometimes if I just get to a point with a curriculum where I'm like, you know, yeah, it's too stressful, or just it's we just don't really like it, um, I'm just not gonna do it. You know, it's just kind of like some things in life, you you just know you're not gonna end up doing them if something's not right. And that may be different. What doesn't work right for me may be different than what doesn't work right for you. But if you can't picture yourself actually doing it, it's kind of like when you go shopping for clothes and you try on a shirt and you're like, well, I like the idea of the shirt, and it's a nice shirt, but it's just not me, or it I just don't like how my belly looks, or my bras kind of see through through through it, or whatever. Um, the chance of you actually wearing that shirt once you've bought it is pretty much slim to none. If you're already second guessing it in the fitting room, you're not gonna wear it. It's gonna be a waste of money, and then it's just gonna create guilt when you try need to get rid of it because you're never wearing it. So it's kind of the same thing with your curriculum. If you can already have some red flags about it or some second guessing you're doing about it, like, can we really fit that in? Is that gonna take too much time or uh is it gonna be too expensive to get all the supplies or whatever it is, put that on the back burner. You can always buy it later and add it in. But if you're already second guessing it from the beginning, chances are when you're actually sitting down to homeschool your kids, that's gonna be the one you go, yeah, maybe next week for 36 weeks. You know, um, it's gonna be like the shirt that just didn't feel quite right. It's gonna be the curriculum that didn't feel quite right, and then you feel guilty that you bought it, and so you're trying to do it, and then you keep putting it on the list, but you keep moving it to next week. You guys know what I'm talking about. I am sure you have done this. So if you're second guessing it, put it on the back burner. You can always get it later, but the chances are you're not gonna want it and it's not gonna work well for you. Okay, tip number seven, be honest about your budget. Okay, budgets are real. I'm not gonna pretend they aren't. Uh very many years. We didn't switch to Math you see for years because of the cost when you first get started. Now, if you start when they're when your oldest is in kindergarten, it's not so bad. You're just buying for mainly one kid each year and then some added, you know, workbooks for the kids coming up. But when you're buying for three kids and there's now two different of the manipulative sets you have to buy, because you have an older child who gets the like whatever it's called, the multiplication one or decimal. I don't even know. I haven't really looked at it yet. But there's sets you need to buy for your older kids, and there's sets for the younger kids, and then all the workbooks. Like, we spent a lot of money on math this year switching, and I waited years to do that because budget is a real concern. Um, if a curriculum is out of your reach financially, then it's out of your reach financially, and that's okay. It's not forever. Every year can change, but really uh stick with your budget. There's so many ways to save money. I have done homeschooling for most years, spending less than like$300 on everything, including the books and everything for all my kids total. And so you don't have to spend a ton to homeschool. Do you need to get a little craftier? Probably buy used, borrow, things like that. But really take that into consideration and don't feel like you have to spend a ton of money just because other people are using the big fancy shiny curriculum. Nobody has to know what you're using. Um, that's okay. You do what works best for you. And then I want to share some of the mistakes that I see most often from friends and from people online and even from myself. Um, and that, first of all, is that the grass is always greener. With social media, you know, before social media, homeschool moms like had no idea what anybody else was doing unless they actually spoke to them. And then it was like, cool, that's what you're doing. You know, who really cares? Like it's cool to share, but we don't need to compare because we don't see it every day. But when we have social media, we see what people are doing, and it looks so beautiful, and it's so easy to feel like the grass is greener on the other side, but it's not. You're seeing a highlight reel. I'm guilty of this as well. I try to be as transparent and honest and relatable and real online as I can be, but it's impossible to do that without sharing every part of my life, which I'm not willing to do. And so the grass looks greener on the other side, but trust me, there are gonna be issues in every homeschool with real kids and real moms and real dads and real life happening. So this idea that if I just switch the curriculum, everything will work out perfectly is just false. Also, another mistake I've seen is over planning and under-executing. So, over planning um is where you're planning it so much, but you're not being realistic of how it's actually gonna fit. So, what I mean by this is like I've spent all this time researching and planning my homeschool, and I have it all on paper, but I haven't actually done the part where I plan where it's all gonna fit. Um, so I've planned what I'm gonna do, but I haven't actually planned the how, how I'm gonna execute it. And so your planning really needs to be grounded in the reality of your life, or it's just a beautiful fantasy. So, really taking the time not just to plan the what, but the how and when. Um, also, another big mistake that I see that has helped so much once I've corrected this in my own own homeschool, is not having a repeating weekly plan. So maybe you just never plan the how. And so every week you're sitting down to have to figure that out, and every week it looks different. That is so quick to lead to burnout and stress. Uh, that it's just to me sounds very scary if I were to go back to that place. So you'd I would recommend, I mean, you can do it that way. You can rebuild your homeschool every single Sunday. That is something you can choose to do. That's totally fine. Um, but it can really help, like I mentioned earlier, of having a repeating weekly plan where most weeks this is what I follow. If we have an appointment or something comes up, or a kid is sick, we can shift things around. But we have a general framework of what books we're reading, what days, what days of the curriculum we're fitting into, which days, so on and so forth. And I have a whole episode on this. I will leave in the show notes for you that'll go into way more detail about it, but and how to like actually set this up in different situations based on what type of curriculum you use. But I would definitely go listen to that after this if that's not something you have set up in your homeschool. But I would highly recommend having a repeating weekly plan before you even get to September. Um, planning it out from the get-go, making adjustments as you go when you actually get to September and you start homeschooling. Of course, things may shift when you actually see how it feels in a real day, in a real week, in a real month. But having an overall plan that you're going to follow is so much easier than rebuilding that week every single week and not knowing where pretty much anything's gonna fit or any of the loop subjects or any of that's gonna fit till you get to that week. That's very stressful. And my last tip at the end of this is to trust yourself more and just know that over time you're going to build confidence, and I want you to lean into that confidence. Don't feel like, well, I've been doing this a long time, but I don't know everything. None of us know everything. We're all trying to figure it out, but give yourself some grace and have some confidence. Uh, I really want to end with that. I want you to know that you can have confidence in what you choose and stand by what you choose, even if it ends up not being the right thing. Um, it's just there's so much comparison in the world today, and just because you chose differently than somebody else doesn't mean you're wrong or bad. They can have confidence in what they chose. That's great, and I can have confident confidence in what I chose. Um, so the confidence doesn't have to come from having it all figured out, it doesn't have to come from being perfect because we're not, it doesn't have To come from uh that your kids are gonna be perfect every single day. That's not where it needs to come from. It can come from just being willing to try new things, enjoying the process, um, being curious of how it's going to work out and being honest with yourself that if it doesn't work out, I can adjust. And that's okay. That doesn't mean I'm bad. That doesn't mean I'm wrong. That doesn't mean anything negative. It's just, it's a learning experience, and you don't really know until you try. You know your children better than any curriculum author does or anyone else online. You know your home, your rhythms, your season of life. The curriculum is a tool, but you are the teacher. And the longer you do this, hopefully the better you get at using the tools in a way that actually fits your family, and hopefully, the more confident you can be in your decisions, whether it's gonna work out the way you thought or not. The gift of homeschooling for several years is that you over time stop borrowing other people's homeschools and you really start building your own and you have confidence in that. Um, there's just something beautiful about that, about owning it, whether it's gonna work out or not. Um so if you want to see all of this in practice and kind of like the fruits of all of this effort, you can go see my actual curriculum that we're using for next year in my blog post for my kindergartner, my third grader, sixth grader, and toddler. And I've included the full blog post in the show notes. It has every book, every curriculum resource, every product with links and discount codes. So go check check that out if you guys are interested. And if you're feeling overwhelmed just by the planning side of all of this, not the curriculum choices, but just the actual building of your weekly rhythm and all the different systems that come along with being a mom and a homeschool mom in general, you can grab my free starter glueprint at homeschoolglue.com slash start. And it has a weekly rhythm builder in there so you can figure out where you want to fit everything in as you're planning, which can be really helpful. And take that curriculum that you've chosen and create a map out of it so that every week you know what's happening, and by the end of the year next year, you can just pull everything out. You don't even have to look at anything. Like it's it's pretty amazing. Um, and it runs on autopilot and it saves you so much time than having to rebuild your homeschool every Sunday. I hope this episode was helpful. I will see you next Tuesday. Happy homeschooling. I pray this episode blessed you and gave you something useful that will make homeschooling easier or more fulfilling. If this episode made you feel seen or gave you one thing to change this week, would you please share it and leave a review? That's how more homeschool moms who are struggling with overwhelm can find something that actually helps. You can always find me on Instagram at homeschoolglue where we talk simple systems, rich learning, and the real version of homeschool life. You don't need to do it all, you just need systems that stick. I'll see you next week. Happy homeschooling, you know.